The first generation of HBM, which SK Hynix is now shipping, provides 2Gb per DRAM die, 1Gbps speed per pin, 128GB/sec of bandwidth and is stackable in groups of four. This results in 4 x 128GB/sec = 512GB/sec, with another 128GB/sec coming from somewhere else on the card. But, the second-generation HBM is going to be lightning quick, even compared to the already-damn-impressive first-gen HBM tech.

The second-gen HBM technology will allow for 8Gb per DRAM die, up from 2Gb on the first-gen HBM for starts. This means we should see GPUs with 8-16GB of VRAM on-board. Second, the bandwidth increases to 256GB/sec (up from 128GB/sec) which should arrive as around 1.28TB/sec of available memory bandwidth. Considering NVIDIA's second-generation Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980s only have 224GB/sec of memory bandwidth on a 256-bit bus, the 4096-bit wide memory bus with 1.28TB/sec of bandwidth will surely do some insane things, especially at Ultra HD and beyond resolutions.

This is where it will get interesting; over 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth on a 4096-bit bus is going to be an amazing sight to behold, especially at 4K or 8K. Even more so on something like VR with the Oculus Rift, where it could render one eye separate to the other, at 1440p each, and still have memory bandwidth to spare. Things are going to get exciting with the Radeon R9 390X and beyond, but I think that's just the beginning. The R9 490X is going to be when things really kick into second gear, not only spitting on 'next-gen' consoles, but it's going to be when game developers hopefully wake up and realize they should be coding for these GPUs with insane amounts of memory bandwidth, as they're truly next, next-gen technologies.

AMD’s elusive high-end GPU has been spotted for the third time in the Zauba shipping database. The flagship will allegedly power the R9 390X.

This time however unlike the previous two leaks not one, not two and not even three but four PCB assemblies for the GPU have been shipped. And for the first time the listing included a very peculiar suffix “(FOC)” which we believe stands for Full Operational Capacity. This signals that the card has exited the early prototyping stage as finalized samples are being shipped for end-stage testing and evaluation.
The R9 390X moniker will only serve as a place holder for this article until we know for sure what AMD has decided to call it. However there’s strong indication that this is going to be the new flagship GPU from AMD to lead the charge on the 2015 graphics refresh.

AMD Fiji XT R9 390X Leaked For The Third Time On Zauba

If you remember back in November we had reported that there are four different Fiji XT prototype cooling units. With the leaked Hydra hybrid cooling unit being only one of them. The four Fiji XT units recently shipped could be one of each. Likely for the purposes of testing and making the final decision on which one is going to be used for the mass produced graphics cards. It may also just end up being pure coincidence.

This is indeed the third time that Fiji XT has made its way to the shipping database. And the second time it did so in disguise. The first time the GPU was leaked it had been frankly listed as Fiji XT but as we had discussed in our last article covering the second appearance of the GPU. Someone at AMD had actually realized this and proceeded to omit the Fiji XT nomenclature/code name from future listings.
This occasion is no exception and as with the previous listing the code name has been omitted. However just like last time enough of the description (effectively all of it except “Fiji XT”) has been left out unchanged. So we can confidently conclude that this is indeed Fiji XT.

If the previous SiSoftware Sandra leak is anything to go by then we’re looking at a 4096 GCN core GPU with 4GB of stacked High Bandwidth Memory and a 4096bit wide I/O memory interface. All built on a cutting edge manufacturing process. I’ve discussed in great detail the numerous indications that AMD had given as to which process Fiji XT may be manufactured on. As things currently stand 20nm is shaping up to be the process of choice for a number of upcoming products from AMD.

WCCFTech

Fiji XT (R9 390X)

GM200 (Titan II)

GM204 (GTX 980)

Hawaii (R9 290X)

CUDA/GCN Cores

4096

3072

2048

2816

Memory Capacity

4GB HBM

6GB GDDR5

4GB GDDR5

4GB GDDR5

Memory Clock Speed

1Ghz

7Ghz Effective

7Ghz Effective

5Ghz Effective

Memory Bandwidth

640GB/s

336GB/s

224GB/s

320GB/s

Boost Clock Speed

1.25Ghz

~1.2Ghz

~1.2Ghz

1Ghz

Manufacturing Process

-

TSMC 28nm

TSMC 28nm

TSMC 28nm

SMC’s 20 SoC has been described as being inappropriate for discrete graphics cards by some due to its low power nature. However TSMC’s 20nm SoC process has proven to be easily capable of hitting excellently high clock speeds. The process manages to sustain frequencies just as high as 28nm if not slightly higher, making it an ideal candidate for discrete GPUs.
We know this thanks to Nvidia’s just announced 20nm Tegra X1 SOC which features the Maxwell GPU architecture. Based on Nvidia’s official figures the integrated Maxwell GPU operates at a frequency of 1Ghz.
That’s 50mhz above the integrated GPU of the Tegra K1 and merely ~200 mhz below the desktop GM204 based GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards. 200mhz is the same frequency delta that stands between the 28nm Tegra K1 and the 28nm discrete Kepler GPUs. The Tegra SOCs (and notebook GPUs) are often clocked more conservatively than their desktop siblings for power saving purposes rather than due to a fault of the manufacturing process.
So we’re looking at a 20nm process from TSMC that not only performs as well as the high performance versions of 28nm but also consumes significantly less power.

[QUOTE]An update from sweclockers.com has revealed the code name of the next-next-gen AMD Radeon R9 400 Series GPUs. It goes without saying that the naming is pretty much irrelevant at such an early stage. The revealed codename for the series is Arctic Islands and the actual GPU name could be of any island present there. There is currently zero information regarding the Radeon R9 400 Series apart from the fact it will be based on a 20nm or lower node (most probably 16/14nm FinFET).

Heres to hoping the new cards will be as cool as these glaciers. @Umich EDU

AMD’s Radeon R9 400 is called ‘Arctic Islands’ – better cooled?

The first thing that came to my mind when I read the report was what would happen when AMD finally ran out of Island containing regions of the world. Okay. At any rate, the Arctic Islands designation contains around a hundred islands with varying naming. The actual GPU nomenclature could be any of these Islands. The Radeon 7000 series GPUs were called Southern Islands and the R9 200 Series ‘Volcanic Islands’. The upcoming R9 300 Series is named ‘Pirate Islands’ and, finally, the R9 400 series will be called ‘Arctic Islands’.

While code-names arent really indicative of any actual features of the GPU, Arctic Islands could (read: a reasonable sized, non-zero chance) in theory refer to the cooling capacity of these GPUs. IF AMD does indeed transition to the lower process with FinFETs, energy efficiency will increase with decent TDP cuts across the board. That means that in all eventuality we will be looking at very reasonable heat output (and therefore more room for over clocking on air).
This is going to be a rather short post because there is nothing really that can be derived from this leak, apart from the implication of a better cooling system. AMD’s Arctic Islands Radeon R9 400 Series GPUs are expected to come after the Radeon R9 300 series (obviously) and the earliest we can expect them is 2H 2016 (next year). Probably the most interesting question about these new GPUs will be the process on which they are manufactured on (Inhouse (GloFo) vs TSMC).

Advanced Micro Devices yet has to reveal its new families of graphics processing units this year, but already now the code-name of AMD’s 2016 graphics products lineup is known. Apparently, the company will continue to use names of islands to call its next-generation chips.
AMD’s next-generation family of Radeon GPUs will be called “Arctic Islands”, reports SweClockers. Therefore, expect code-names like Greenland, Svalbard, Ellesmere, Wrangel and others. At present nothing particular is known about the new family, except of the fact that it will traditionally cover every market segment from top to bottom. It is likely that the new graphics chips will be made using 14nm or 16nm FinFET process technologies.
AMD’s product families like “Southern Islands”, “Sea Islands” or “Volcanic Islands” may, or may not, be based on the same architecture. Traditionally, families contain chips that may belong to different generations and may have different feature-sets.
It is anticipated that AMD will reveal its all-new family of graphics processing units next year. The lineup will be based on a post-GCN architecture and will therefore bring-in new levels of performance and new functionality. Unfortunately, it is unknown whether the new GPUs will carry “Artic Islands” code-names.
It is expected that the “Arctic Islands” products will be sold under AMD Radeon R* 400-series brand names.
AMD did not comment on the news-story.

In 2016 APU design
The world is still expecting the birth of the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) boosted Fiji GPU, and the first cards based on the new chip should launch in late June, or the end of Q2 2015 if you prefer.

AMD is looking ahead and their engineers are working hard on the company's next generation HBM card, currently codenamed Greenland. We are not sure if this is the name of the whole generation or this is simply a single GPU backed by HBM, that will end up in APUs.
Like we said, we doubt that Fiji will actually launch on the Pacific island of Fiji and that the Greenland launch event will be held on Greenland (Denmark), but we can confirm that the Greenland GPU will use HBM memory. There is still no confirmation on the manufacturing process, but we would expect that Greenland ends in either 14nm GlobalFoundries process or TSMC's 16nm process. Greenland will be a part of AMD's next generation K12 APU, which means that this multiple Zen core APU will get some great graphics performance. It is not clear if Greenland is a part of the Caribbean Islands (Fiji) generation or if it belongs to a successor generation. Greenland uses HBM in 2016

At this time we cannot confirm (or deny) whether or not Greenland will launch as a desktop card, too, and we can only speculate that Greenland is shrunk derivative of the Fiji generation architecture.
Nvidia's first HBM Pascal card that is coming by early 2016. Pascal will use the 2.5 D HMB approach and probably HBM 2 memory, and we expect that AMD's Fiji successor will use HBM 2 memory as well 2 memory as well.
Details are limited, apart of the fact that Greenland can end up in the next generation APU such as K12, making the architecture quite scalable. High Bandwidth Memory combined with new K12 cores might create the fastest integrated product of all time, and let's not forget that AMD is putting a lot of emphasis on Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) and the compute side of things. With the help of HBM-powered Greenland that can end up with 500GB/s bandwidth, along with multiple Zen 64-bit CPU cores, you can expect quite a lot of compute performance from this new integrated chip.

AMD Greenland GPU Rumored To Launch Next Year – Part of Radeon R400 “Arctic Islands” Family

AMD is rumored to launch their Greenland GPU next year as reported by Fudzilla, which is believed to replace the Radeon R300 series cards launching this year. AMD is yet to launch their current R300 series lineup which is assumed to be known as the “Pirate Islands” family to replace their current Radeon R200 GPU family that are codenamed “Volcanic Islands” but we now have a clue or an indication to what AMD will call their next graphics component featured in the R400 series lineup.AMD Greenland GPU Rumored To Power AMD’s Next Generation R400 Series Graphics Family

First of all, there have been no official confirmation by AMD on their codenames on current and upcoming products. AMD doesn’t go public with the codenames and naming schemes of their graphics products and family which results in confusion and the Volcanic Islands name was officially used by AMD in their slides just a few months ago. They hadn’t been used by AMD prior to few months back however the codename was first known several years ago. During the same time, we came to know about the Pirate Islands family and some reports confirmed it recently that AMD might indeed be branding their Radeon R400 series as the Pirate Islands family of Radeon graphics cards.

A report has emerged by Fudzilla which claims that the Radeon R400 series “Arctic Islands” family is coming in 2016 and will feature the Greenland GPU which will feature High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) support. It is not mentioned which specific graphics cards or branding will the Greenland GPU use it is pointed that AMD will be launching Fiji GPU in late June or Q2 2015 and the engineering work is now focused on the next series that will arrive in 2016. Greenland GPU is interesting since it won’t be fused on just graphics cards but the design and technology will be transferred to next generation APUs too, featuring HBM designs, as rumored by the source.
The Greenland GPU might not even end up as a pure desktop card but a graphics architecture that is designed specifically for accelerated processing units with HBM 2 (2.5 D) memory support. The GPU will be a shrunken node based upon the Fiji architecture that we will get to see on the upcoming Radeon R300 series lineup and will be fused inside APU designs. It should be noted here that this won’t be the first time AMD has used a GPU architecture carried from their discrete graphics offerings. AMD’s Kaveri APUs were the first to make use of a proper discrete class GCN core architecture backed by the enhancements we saw in the Bonaire and Hawaii generation of chips featuring TrueAudio DSPs and carrying full support for the Mantle API which were other wise not available on the Radeon HD 7000 series lineup which were also based on the GCN core architecture but an older “Southern Islands” revision.
It could be possible that while the Greenland GPU holds no place in the desktop family, it will still be denoted as a Radeon R400 series “Arctic Islands” chip. The Greenland GPU can make its way to several designs on the upcoming APUs based on the K12 ARM and x86 Zen core architecture which are due in 2016. Zen will be the high-performance replacement targeted towards servers and high-performance enthusiasts platform so it will be unlikely to see a iGPU variant on those processors until Zen cores are available later on APU market, later in its lifetime. As for K12 which makes use of ARM cores, its highly possible for AMD to fuse the Greenland GPU there to enhance usability and compute performance of APUs utilizing HSA in the dense server, embedded and semi-custom markets. These GPUs and APUs are still a year away so nothing being reported has yet been materialized and this information currently remains unverified until official word from AMD.

Focused on low power
Greenland is the successor of Fiji, and we don’t think it will be radically new core. The main goal for Greenland is to bring more performance per watt to AMD GPUs in 2016.

AMD's highly anticipated Fiji GPU is a 28nm design, and so are the GM200 based GPUs that ended up in Nvidia's latest Titan X cards. The Geforce GTX 980 based on GM204 GPU is also manufactured in 28nm manufacturing node at TSMC. Back in November, we said there was simply no place for 20nm GPUs in 2015. The yields are horrible and this is one of the reasons why neither Nvidia nor AMD went for TSMC's 20nm node.
The future is at least a bit brighter, as the successor to AMD Fiji, codenamed Greenland, will focus on lower power. AMD hopes to win the hearts of notebooks manufacturers and decrease the overall power consumption of its desktop GPUs too. It worked well for Nvidia'a Maxwell and AMD hopes it can get the same effect too. We hear that the second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) is also part of the Greenland spec and as we have mentioned before HBM2 memory doubles the bandwidth and doubles the maximum memory size for the future cards.14nm, HBM 2, Pascal, Greenland, interposer

Our early information is that Greenland will be made in GlobalFoundries / Samsung's 14nm manufacturing process and it is not clear if AMD will stay loyal to TSMC for its GPUs and use its 16nm manufacturing process. Korea Times thinks that Nvidia might go after Samsung's 14nm instead of 16nm TSMC manufacturing process for its next generation GPUs, but we are not convinced.

Nvidia's Pascal is also a lower power HBM part that is scheduled to come in 2016, and one can only speculate whether this is a TSMC 16nm GPU or 14nm GlobalFoundries / Samsung one. The bottom line is that after many years of 28nm products, GPU industry will finally move to a smaller manufacturing node and if you think about it you can put four times the transistors on 14nm on the same die size. GM200 has 8 billion transistors on its 28nm at 601 square millimeter die size and with the rough math; you would be able to place 32 billion transistors in 14nm on the same space. However, it's not that simple and we won't see such a linear improvement, since we are dealing with a non-planar node.
With Fiji, and Greenland later in 2016, we expect AMD to become more competitive and regain some of its lost GPU market share, but Nvidia won't simply stand by and hand over the market. Nvidia will fight Fiji with a faster GM200 based Geforce GTX 980 TI card, performance driver, and later with Pascal High Bandwidth Memory supporting graphics card too. It will be a fun second part of 2015 and 2016 is bound to be a very eventful year for the GPU market.

According to the latest reports, AMD will skip the problematic 20nm manufacturing node for their next-generation 'Arctic Islands' GPUs, which the company is expected to launch in 2016. Instead, Arctic Islands will progress directly to 14nm FinFET in the hope of attaining higher levels of efficiency.
Currently, all GPUs in the market are produced using a 28nm process, both from AMD and Nvidia. It's widely expected that AMD's upcoming Rx 300 line of GPUs, set to launch in a few months, will also be manufactured using a 28nm process due to a slew of issues with TSMC's 20nm node that have repeatedly delayed its introduction.
At this stage it's not known whether AMD will stick with TSMC and hope that their 14nm FinFET node is ready on time, or whether they'll switch to a company like Intel or Samsung, both of which have operational 14nm nodes. Currently the node is being used for CPU, SoC and NAND production, but it's expected to suit GPUs just as well.
Considering Arctic Islands is two generations away, details are a little scarce at this stage. With the move to 14nm, these graphics cards are expected to feature low TDPs, similar to Nvidia's Maxwell cards today. 'Greenland' is the codename for Arctic Islands' flagship GPU, which will come with an advanced design featuring SK Hynix's HBM2 memory.
For now though, AMD is focused on getting the Rx 300 line out the door, which should launch around Computex in June.

During an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD said that the move to 16nm FinFET will have a possible 2x energy efficiency improvement over previous generation GPUs. 16nm is going to be a large jump for both NVIDIA and AMD, but we are going to see HBM2 used at the same time. NVIDIA's use of HBM2 will be the first time they will use High Bandwidth Memory, but it'll be AMD's second time, since Fury X will be powered by the next generation RAM.

AMD Working On An Entire Range of HBM GPUs To Follow Fiji And Fury Lineup – Has Priority To HBM2 Capacity

We’ve received information that AMD engineers are hard at work on a range of GPUs featuring stacked high bandwidth memory to follow Fiji. While Fiji is AMD’s first GPU to feature this new high bandwidth graphics memory standard, it certainly won’t be the last.
The range will span top to bottom solutions featuring SK Hynix’s stacked high bandwidth memory, HBM for short. This new lineup will also serve as the vehicle by which AMD will introduce this new memory technology to the mobile segment with the company’s first ever set of HBM GPUs designed for notebooks.AMD Working On An Entire Range of HBM GPUs To Follow Fiji And Fury Lineup

The advantages that HBM brings to the table, including the significantly reduced PCB area and improved power efficiency, makes its use in notebooks an extremely attractive proposition. The smaller chip and board area as well as the power efficiency gains that HBM enables would have a more profound impact on notebooks where power and size are much more strict limitations than what we typically see on the desktop. However AMD showed no shyness in leveraging those advantages on the desktop with the compact Radeon R9 Fury X and the even smaller Radeon R9 Nano.
We found out last year that AMD is working on a new graphics architecture that will succeed GCN 1.2 ( Fiji and Tonga ) in 2016. The new family of GPUs based on this architecture are reportedly code named Arctic Islands with a flagship enthusiast GPU code named Greenland. This family is set to debut next year with second generation HBM and on a new FinFET (14/16nm) manufacturing process rather than 28nm which is what all discrete GPUs from Nvidia and AMD are currently based on.
The process node jump makes Arctic Islands a true next generation family of products due to the benefits that accompany any migration to a smaller process node. The significant increase in transistor density, switching speeds and reduced leakage enable faster, larger, more power efficient and more complex GPUs than what’s possible on 28nm today.AMD Has Priority Access To HBM2 Production Capacity And Is Aiming To Take Full Advantage Of It

Our sources have told us that AMD management has thrown significant weight behind this new range of graphics chips to accelerate its development and time to market. This is we’re told is to take advantage of a deal established with SK Hynix which gives AMD priority to HBM2 capacity which is going to be in limited supply initially. Capturing as much of the initial production capacity as possible would give AMD an edge against its main rival, Nvidia, going into the next generation of GPUs featuring second generation HBM technology. Which is exactly what the company is gunning for.

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If successful this would push Nvidia’s Pascal launch schedule back than what the company originally planned. But the time waiting will not go to waste we’ve no doubt. The company has reportedly already taped out its first Pascal chip. However without access to HBM2 the graphics cards based on Pascal can’t produced. This may lead the company to consider the possibility of spending more time working on successive Pascal chips until it can secure enough HBM2 production capacity.
This fascinating dynamic is the result of AMD’s seven year involvement in the co-development of the High Bandwidth Memory JEDEC standard with its partner SK Hynix we’re told. Which is why AMD was the first company to introduce a product featuring HBM. And why the the first generation of the technology is exclusive to the company. It’s not clear whether SK Hynix will continue to give AMD priority access to production capacity with HBM3 and successive generations of the technology. Although AMD is clearly keen on leveraging its exclusivity deal with SK Hynix in the here and now.
While being first to market can be advantageous, going second can prove to be equally favorable. As it would allow competitors to size up their competition and prepare a more appropriate response. We’ve seen this take place time and time again with each generation of GPUs.
We can’t wait for 2016, HBM2 enables memory capacities right times as large as what HBM1 can deliver today and memory bandwidth figures upwards of one terabytes per second. The current flock of enthusiast graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD can run most graphically demanding games like The Witcher 3 and Crysis 3 at 30+ FPS. Next year however may very well be when most graphically intensive games can finally be maxed out at 4K with a more agreeable 60 FPS average and HBM2 will play a crucial part in making that possible. 4K monitors have gone down in price considerably in the past couple of years and continue to become more affordable. 2016 might just be when 4K become what 2560×1440 is today and 1440p in turn replaces 1080p as the new mainstream resolution for PC gamers.